Contact: Golda Solomon: 877-529-9528 or gs@goldajazz.com

Cornelia Street Café: 212-989-9319 or corneliastreetcafe@earthlink.net

For immediate release

Po’Jazz at The Cornelia Street Cafe

Poetry in Partnership with Jazz

Thursday, September 15th, 2005 6 - 8 p.m.

Po’Jazz, the one-of-a-kind jazz and poetry series at The Cornelia Street Café, marks its return from summer break by hosting its third annual Manhattan Magazine evening featuring four-time national poetry slam champion Patricia Smith. The performance will take place on Thursday, September 15th from 6 to 8 pm in Po’Jazz’s third Thursday evening of the month slot Downstairs at the Café. The downstairs room opens at 5:30 for early dining and imbibing (serving the same fine food as upstairs.) Admission is $13 ($11 students/seniors), which includes one drink.

Poet and host Golda Solomon, “The Medicine Woman of Jazz,” also welcomes poets and musicians from Manhattan College and the College of Mount Saint Vincent, including fellow Manhattan College faculty member, writer/poet/professor Joseph Lennon, and poets featured in Manhattan Magazine, the college’s literary publication. Bassist Adam Chilenski will front the Po’Jazz house band.

Patricia Smith has performed on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam and in spoken word venues throughout the U.S. and abroad. Her manuscript Teahouse of the Almighty was just selected as a National Poetry Series Open Competition winner and will be published next year. Victor Infante of the Orange County Weekly said “Smith epitomizes what a performance poet should be: supremely confident, radiating with presence, drilling each word for precise effect, no nuance of inflection too small for consideration. Perhaps the greatest irony is that her talent for performance often eclipses her writing ability—which is, likewise, immense.”

Golda Solomon’s unique brand of jazz-flavored poetry has been described as having “a rhythm and spontaneity that goes right to the heart… (She) has found her perfect accompaniment in jazz” (Madeline Peters, President and founder of Poet’s Corner). Golda was just named an International Women in Jazz awardee and has been invited to perform on October 6th at St. Peter’s Church in midtown Manhattan in a celebration of the 10th anniversary of IWJ and 40th anniversary of St. Peter’s, the “Jazz Church”.

This performance is part of a third Thursday of the month poetry and jazz series at The Cornelia Street Café programmed by JazzJaunts founder Golda Solomon (www.jazzjaunts.com). Po’Jazz is increasingly becoming “the place to be” every third Thursday. Gladys Serrano of Mutable Music says, “Po’Jazz at Cornelia Street is one big friendly party of good words, good sounds, and good food.” A two-cd set of live Po’Jazz performances at Cornelia Street is due out this fall.

The Café is located at 29 Cornelia Street, Greenwich Village, NYC. Po’Jazz events take place in the café’s downstairs performance space. By subway, take the A, C, E, F or V train to West 4th Street, or the 1 or 9 train to Christopher Street - Sheridan Square (walk 2.5 blocks east on West 4th and make a right onto Cornelia Street.) By car, take 7th Avenue south to Bleecker; left on Bleecker; left onto Cornelia. For more information, visit www.corneliastreetcafe.com, or call 212-989-9319.

The Cornelia Street Café poetry series is curated by Angelo Verga. The next performance in the series will take place from 6 to 8 pm on Thursday, October 20th.

About the Artists
( e-mail info@icaan.biz for photos)

Adam Chilenski, bass, is excited to be living in NYC. Having recently moved here from Portland, Maine he already considers it his home. Adam has been making a living as a musician since high school, and says he has no plans to do anything else.

Joseph Lennon has published poetry and essays on literature and Irish culture in journals, magazines, and anthologies. Dr. Lennon is assistant professor of English at Manhattan College and is poetry editor of The Recorder, the journal of the American Irish Historical Society. His first book, Irish Orientalism: A Literary and Intellectual History (Syracuse University Press), was published last year. Author Stephen Howe says of it, “[Lennon’s work]… is undoubtedly the fullest, most detailed and perceptive analysis of these themes yet to have been attempted.”

Patricia Smith is a four-time national individual poetry slam champion. She has read her work at countless venues around the globe including Carnegie Hall, Bumbershoot, the Writers Voice, Black Roots at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center, the Poets Stage in Stockholm, Expo 90 in Osaka, the Sorbonne in Paris, and on tour with Lollapalooza. Smith has shared the stage with Adrienne Rich, Sharon Olds, Allen Ginsburg, Walter Mosley, Joyce Carol Oates, Ntozake Shange, Gwendolyn Brooks and Galway Kinnell. She was featured in the nationally-released film “Slamnation,” appeared on an episode of the HBO series “Def Poetry Jam,” and performed the poem “Awakening” at the 1991 inauguration of Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago. Her manuscript Teahouse of the Almighty was just selected as a National Poetry Series Open Competition winner and will be published next year, as will her biography of Harriet Tubman, Fixed on a Furious Star. She is the author of three earlier volumes of poetry—Close to Death, Big Towns, Big Talk, and Life According to Motown. Her poems have been published in The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, AGNI and other literary journals and anthologies. She has won the prestigious Carl Sandburg Award, as well as a literary award from the Illinois Arts Council and an honorary degree from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. She is also the author of Africans in America, a chronicle of slavery in this country and the companion volume to the groundbreaking four-part PBS series. “Professional Suicide,” a one-woman show that got its start during the summer of 2001 while Smith was writer-in-residence at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT, was produced by The Play Company in New York City and directed by Tony-nominated Marion McClinton. Recordings of her work can be found on the CD Always in the Head (Wordsmith Press), as well as in the compilations Grand Slam, A Snake in the Heart, By Someone’s Good Graces, and Lip. A short film of Smith performing the poem “Undertaker,” produced by San Francisco’s Tied to the Tracks Films, won awards at the Sundance and San Francisco Film Festivals and earned a prestigious Cable Ace Award as part of the Lifetime Network’s first annual Women’s Film Festival. She has taught at Georgia Tech, Cave Canem, and The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center. As Emily Van Hazing of the Fitchburg, MA Sentinel/Enterprise says, “She is a testament to the power of words to change lives.”

Golda Solomon, “the medicine woman of jazz,” is a professor of communications, speech, and theater arts; a poet, performer, producer, and docent; a supporter of women musicians as well as young musicians, poets, and performers. She was project director of Po’Jazz at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center for four years before bringing the series to The Cornelia Street Café in 2003. Golda has pioneered several unique businesses including JazzJaunts, a personalized jazz service, and, with Barbara Sfraga, ICAAN (Interactive Communication and Arts Network), which provides innovative, on-site, organization-specific arts programming to workplaces, schools, and other organizations. She and poet/writer/musician/teacher Monique Avakian are currently conducting “From Page to Performance” workshops for emerging poets and “ready to come out of the closet” writers. Golda has a collection of poetry, Flatbush Cowgirl, published in 1999, for which she co-produced a companion CD, First Set. She also co-produced the CD Po’Jazz: Takin’ It To The Hollow, which includes over 20 poets and musicians, and has a 2-cd set of live Po’Jazz performances from the Cornelia Street Café due out later this year. In 2002, Golda’s poetry won first prize at the Writer’s Workshop in Asheville, North Carolina. She was just named an International Women in Jazz awardee and has been invited to perform her jazz-flavored poetry at a celebration of the organization’s 10th anniversary at the “Jazz Church”, St. Peter’s in midtown Manhattan. Several of her poems are currently featured on the poetry page of www.jerryjazzmusician.com, and her poem “This Ocean” appears in the current issue of Vernacular, the new online literary magazine of Women’s Studio Center, www.womenstudiocenter.org. Her book and CDs are available on www.amazon.com, www.cdbaby.com and www.jazzjaunts.com.